Initially imprisoned, you follow a story-driven character-generation sequence (pick gender, race, profession, etc.), emerging from a crepuscular sewer system into sun-dappled wilderness a battle-hardened, full-shaped citizen of Cyrodiil—thereafter, as in previous games, where you go and what you choose to do are entirely up to you.

Played in first or third person, Oblivion slots health, magic and fatigue bars bottom-screen alongside a compass designed to mitigate potential aimlessness by pointing you at quest locations based on whatever you mark active in a journal. You aggregate these entries by witnessing events, holding conversations or simply roaming within earshot of hot topics discussed (independent of you) by Oblivion's "intelligent" and semi-autonomous citizenry. If you prefer to skip actually walking/running or riding a horse, a quick-travel system hops you instantly between known locales and shaves hours off the game, though at the potential cost of your stumbling onto hundreds of side quests.

Your progress tracks according to how you interact with the environment itself: run often and your speed increases; jump frequently and you'll gradually jump higher; time blocks optimally and you'll eventually see enemies knocked back when they crunch into your iron buckler or two-handed dai-katana. Combat erupts in real time, plugs into systemic physics and pivots on whether you actually see yourself hit, not random dice throws. The right trigger swings weapons or nocks and fires arrows; the left trigger blocks, the shoulder buttons let you jump or cast spells, and the d-pad allow you to map up to eight "hotkey" switches, such as quick spells or torches, or just switch between blade and bow.

Masterful asymmetrical role-playing

Oblivion woos you in stages. First you're smacked, if not quite barreled over, by its brawny slice-of-Scotland vistas. Pine and birch trunks lean and sway in the wind and weather; sun rays bloom around clusters of rustling multicolored leaves; huddled villages spring organically from green pastures or shaded forest glades, and colossal cities perch on cliffs, visible for miles in all directions. Beautiful up close, Oblivion's uncommonly epic horizons can look a bit lumpy, almost like low-res clay, but that's part of the detail trade to keep the frame rate on the Xbox 360 reasonable. Even still, performance remains a bit of an issue as rocks, trees and textures load on the fly and tend to send the Xbox 360 into brief jerking spasms. The PC version is decidedly smoother, and "core" system owners in particular play without a hard drive at their peril.

Looks aside, Elder Scrolls games are fundamentally about leaving you alone but teasing you to wander into this cave or gallop over yonder ridge to see what's on the other side. (A goblin camp? A creature-infested shrine? A farm plagued by bears?) Oblivion counters "possibility paralysis" by making it virtually impossible to go astray in spaghetti tangles of logbook text. If all you want's a Knights of the Old Republic-style story-driven adventure, the game kicks the tires and lights the signal fires. But as the plot's fairly conventional fare, running it sequentially misses some of the most interesting aspects of Oblivion's ecological ebb and flow, and, to put it bluntly, its wild side.

Sure, you can goody-two-shoes up with the Fighter's Guild or fling fireballs and levitate with the Mage's Guild like the Maharishi himself, but why not fall off the wagon a little now and again? Join the Thieves Guild and nick from the rich, or maybe sign up the Dark Brotherhood for some assassination action. Trawl for gossip, hunt for sport or business, track cutthroats for money, or, as the case may be, become one yourself. You can even rank up at a kind of gladiatorial arena located in the Imperial City.

I know what you're thinking, and no, Oblivion is not the "Sam's Club" of role-playing games (big, bountiful ... generic). While Oblivion's gossipy non-player characters are still a far cry from understanding you didn't really intend to stab them during a combat assist—rare since you're mostly a solo act but super-annoying nonetheless—they easily exceed contemporary A.I. averages when it comes to keeping schedules, buying and selling goods, and generally following full day-night cycles with random variance or situational behavior quirks (such as, for instance, having illicit affairs with other NPCs).

In fact it's simply impossible in 1,000 or perhaps even 10,000 words to convey everything that Oblivion does well (much less does in general). Sure, poke it enough and you'll scare out its flaws, occasionally break the AI, stir up an exploit bug or two and possibly suffer the extremely rare console crash, but you're a bold cynic if the pros don't decimate the cons. And yes, this is one more reason to buy an HDTV if you're still riding that fence.